Walking into my house, you will notice that no one is in the living room and rarely do you find us in our perspective rooms. Instead, you will find everyone gathered in the kitchen. This is the place where my family and I create unforgettable memories.

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Food has always brought us closer and for this reason I enjoy cooking and baking. This was derived from my mom who cooks food for us almost every day, but usually never alone because we all help out as a family unit. One might be washing the vegetables, while one dices, and another is setting the table. When it is my turn to decide what to cook, my favorite food is always“ceviche de pescado.” This dish is not too complicated to prepare, however, it is a timely process in which you need to let the fish soak in lemon, then add in diced purple onions, cilantro, tomatoes, carrots, and sometimes even serrano chiles when we need that extra kick. Then the process requires that we let it all soak and cook together for a few hours. This dish is a constant reminder of how all the preparation that goes into making the dish delicious and well worth it relates to how all the sacrifice and dedication my family has had to endure is also a process. They didn’t see success overnight, but they knew that by making the right sacrifices in life would better prepare their children to have more opportunities in the future.   

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I was born in Ameca, Jalisco, Mexico into a middle class family. Although most see this as a good situation, my parents knew that our options in Jalisco would be limited due to crime and corruption and this encouraged my parents to migrate to California along with my two other older siblings and myself in 2004, when I was only months old. My parents sacrificed leaving their own families in Mexico for the future of their children. In Mexico my dad was an Agricultural Engineer and he had to sacrifice his career and his degree to support the well-being of the whole family. Now he is a hard-working carpenter who works on a day-to-day basis.

 

Money is restricted at times, but he never fails to deliver what we need. Although my passion for soccer comes from the love of the game, it also comes from my family’s history seeing that my dad played semi-pro in Mexico. After a hard day of manual labor, you would think my dad would get home and rest. However, this is not the case because my dad gets home from work and sacrifices his rest in order to take me to practice.  It is like my dad always says, “echandole ganas todo se puede” or “with hard work anything is possible”. I don’t consider myself to be naturally the smartest in the room. However, with my dad’s actions and advice, I know that I am very capable of being the smartest person in the room. This is why I want to be a first generation college student-athlete attending a four-year institution. It is my goal to illustrate to my parents that their support was never taken for granted. Like our family dish, “ceviche de pescado,” my success has been a lengthy process with “dices” of sacrifices at every step of the way and I am excited to help my family realize that their commitment results in a successful outcome.